Saturday, November 22, 2008

If you visit the site everyday, and you really should, you may have noticed me testing some advertising for Mozo shoes. Well, I can finally make the official announcement; Food Wishes Video Recipes has its first real sponsor!

As you know, I am passionate about keeping these video recipes free, despite the catastrophic damage they cause to my personal financial health. Originally, I thought I could offset the cost of producing these recipes with Google ads, Amazon links, and viewer donations. Needless to say it hasn't quite worked out that way.

So, I told myself I would try and find a sponsor to help keep the site going. Unfortunately, the offers I got weren't with companies and products that I could honestly recommend. All kidding about the Kraft video contest aside, I would never actively promote a product I didn’t use myself.

I wore two pairs of these shoes for over a month before finally deciding to accept their offer. Mozo makes a line of shoes specifically for cooks and chefs whoe need super-sturdy, safe, and very comfortable shoes while they work those long days. You can check out their products yourselves, but I will say I really love my Mozo shoes, and am very happy to have finally found an advertiser with such a well-made product I can support.

By the way, this is an experiment for the site, and the terms of the deal are very modest to say the least. I'll be going month to month with this promotion, and I'm still a long way off, traffic-wise, where one of these deals would actually support the site fully, so please continue any support you already provide. This will hopefully show other high-quality food-related companies that this site can be a great place to showcase their products.

This video features the short intro you'll see at the beginning of the video recipes while Mozo is a sponsor. It also features my first (and probably last) attempt at modeling.

Haha, love the song, love the dance :D I do, however, think his name is really Axl Rose ;)

In all seriousness, though.. Long time watcher, first time commenter; I'm sure you hear this a lot, chef, but I really do enjoy your little videos as they offer a great deal of inspiration for aspiring foodies such as myself.

I really do appreciate your ideology of keeping this site free of charge for the visitors and I would gladly donate if I could, but I being a poor student, I have very limited finances, so I congratulate you on this new deal. At least in this way you'll recieve somewhat of a compensation for all the help and tips that you've so willingly given us. Thanks once again, and keep up the good work!

Alright, Chef John, I would never normally do this to you, but I need your help...

I have a pound of mild italian sausage sitting in my refrigerator waiting for me to make it into something spectacular for lunch/dinner tomorrow for myself and my fiance. It's raw and in casings, so I could either cook it as hotdog-style sausage or pile-of-ground-meat-style sausage. I don't have any other ground meats to mix it with to make something like your meatballs or meatloaf.

I have staple items on hand (like milk, eggs, breadcrumbs, pasta, etc), but not any perishables at the moment, like fruit or veggies (except for a couple of nice Fuji apples), but if I thought of something really wonderful, I could run to the store for maybe $5 worth of other food items.

If you were in the same situation, what type of a dish would you think to make with it?

I just realized that you seldom use goat cheese--Yay!!! . It seems to be so trendy--much to my dismay because I simply can't get into it. I (nor my husband) like it. I guess that's one reason that I like almost all your recipes--no goat cheese.

Oh Goat Cheese... everyone I know loves it. When we go to dinner at friends it keeps showing up everywhere: on salads, in appetizers, on flatbreads etc. But I also just do not like the stuff. You know how cilantro taste soapy to some people, well Goat cheese taste dirty to me. Or as my husband puts it "like I just licked a goat". :) Maybe we are missing some enzyme necessary to unlocking the delicious aspects of that cheese.

"BEIJING — A newspaper published by China's ruling Communist Party is blasting the latest Guns N' Roses album as an attack on the Chinese nation.

Delayed since recording began in 1994, "Chinese Democracy" hit stores in the U.S. on Sunday, although it is unlikely to be sold legally in China, where censors maintain tight control over films, music and publications.

In an article Monday headlined "American band releases album venomously attacking China," the Global Times said unidentified Chinese Internet users had described the album as part of a plot by some in the West to "grasp and control the world using democracy as a pawn."

Great dance!...now about the shoes, how did they feel? Are you still wearing them? Do they have room in the "toe box?" I ask, because of having bad feet....a total of 30 operations to be exact. Yeeks...that's over 27 years mind you...but I am still vertical and always looking for good shoes...can I ask another question? Thanks

It's the "follow the sourdough" recipe...turned out okay, but how do I "feed" the left overs? And, would it be okay to add a little extra sugar to it?